Crossbones (33 page)

Malik is conscious of his gauche failure—giving importance to the death of an individual when he should be concerned with the current state of the nation, in apparent contrast to Ahl, who, being physically distant from the scene of the bombings and having not known Dajaal
in person, can afford a wider perspective in his assessment of these events. Maybe when one lives in a city riven by civil war, one is obsessed with the immediate situation almost to the exclusion of all else, whereas when one is operating outside these stressful conditions, one has the luxury, as Ahl does, to take a broader view and to study the matter from an entirely different perspective. At the moment, Malik is so preoccupied with Dajaal’s death—with thinking and writing about it—that he needs reminding that the Ethiopians are spreading their tentacles into strategic locations in Mogadiscio.

Malik ends the call and returns to his writing. Barely has he completed an initial draft and saved it when Qasiir calls.

After offering his heartfelt condolences, Malik says, “I suggest you take it easy for a couple of days. You need the time to grieve, to mourn your grandfather. He was a wonderful, wonderful man in my view, too.”

Qasiir says, “I would be failing Grandpa and dishonoring his memory if I did not get on with my life in the same way I had always done before his death—and perform my responsibility toward the jobs at hand.”

Malik is shocked and impressed: shocked, because he can’t imagine being able to function so soon after the untimely death of a beloved grandfather; impressed, because only pragmatists, who value life for what it is—a loan that is borrowed and, as with all loans, must be returned—appreciate every moment of it, conscious of the need to put food on the table, draw water from the well, graze the beasts, tend the sick—so that other people may go on living. He feels humbled, as he doesn’t think he would have done for anyone what Qasiir is doing.

“Then why don’t you come,” he says.

Qasiir arrives: hugs, condolences, and regrets.

He tells Malik about Dajaal’s death in a more succinct way than
Cambara had done. Apparently a man stalked him as he walked to the mosque. Fifty meters before Dajaal reached the house of worship, the gunman pulled out his Magnum 55 and hit him in the back of the head; a professional killing, no room for error, and death was instantaneous. Malik is relieved that Qasiir spares him the gory details. He says purposefully, “Grandpa is dead. I know who will pay for it: a life for a life. We’ll have to do what we must do today, and then sometime in the future, the assassin will pay for what he has done. Meanwhile, I’ll bide my time and live my life in the way I see fit, and as Grandpa would have been happy with if he had been alive, relying on the guidance of a Somali wisdom—that the shoes of a dead man are more useful than he is.”

Malik isn’t familiar with Somali poetry or proverbs. But he is conversant with the Arabic tradition, having been brought up on a rich diet of Arabic poetry, especially of the pre-Islamic period, otherwise known as the Jaahiliya—the time of ignorance. So he recites in his head a couple of verses from Imrul Qays, indubitably the best Arab poet of any era, the son of a sultan, who uttered his most famous riposte on the assassination of his father, giving air to words of cynicism that have since entered Arab folklore. Asked when he might avenge his father, Qays replied, “Tomorrow is for drinking, tomorrow for vengeance.” Malik wonders if Qasiir will do the killing quietly, in his own time, since, according to Cambara, he is not the type to rush matters.

Malik finds himself discomfited to be alone with Qasiir, now that he has learned the shape of Qasiir’s thinking. Malik’s eyes wander away; he cannot bear to focus on Qasiir’s palsied features, his evasiveness a testament to his own desire not to bear witness to a mourner’s pain. In the long silence that follows, he fidgets, then makes tea and, to keep busy, offers to prepare a meal. When Qasiir tells him he has
no wish to eat anything, he suggests they go for a drive. He finds the apartment too small to contain the two of them.

Qasiir asks, “Where?”

Malik has been wondering what changes the carousel of politics, with the Courts now departed and the Ethiopians and the Transitional Federal Government replacing them, has brought about. He thinks that there is no place better than the Bakhaaraha to study them.

“Let’s go to the Bakhaaraha,” Malik suggests.

“What do you have in mind?” Qasiir asks.

Malik says, “We may run into people we know.”

“And of what benefit is that to either of us?”

The thought of running into BigBeard so soon after the Courts’ authority has been dismantled perversely excites Malik. But he chooses not to speak of this wrongheadedness to Qasiir now, lest Qasiir think him deranged. He simply locks up, making sure that all the security contraptions are in good working order. Then he follows Qasiir, who leads the way, down the staircase, through the passageways, and finally to the parking lot.

In the car, Malik says, “Maybe we’ll run into Gumaad.”

“Gumaad is on his way to Eritrea,” Qasiir says, “appointed as the spokesman of the exiled Somali community in Asmara. The group includes the Courts and several other Somali associations opposing the Transitional Federal Government and Ethiopia. He was on the radio, giving an interview at the top of the hour.”

“How did he get there so quickly?” Malik asks. “I wonder if he is lying again, claiming to be speaking from Asmara when he is right here in the city.” It feels like a long time ago when Gumaad suggested that he interview TheSheikh. A lot can happen in a day in a civil war. Dajaal
is dead and buried; Gumaad is in Asmara. What else has he missed? “And where is TheSheikh?”

“Gumaad escorted TheSheikh on a special flight that took him straight to Eritrea,” Qasiir says. “Presumably, they were flown out of an airstrip still believed to be in the hands of the Courts. The mystery now surrounds TheOtherSheikh. One rumor places him in a village near the Somali-Kenya border, another speaks of the possibility of him going to the Sudan or Libya, where he was schooled.”

“What’s become of the other Courts members?”

“Some are headed for Iran, some to the Gulf.”

“Is it fair to assume that every single Somali politician has a different paymaster outside this country from whom he receives instructions, and whose interests he serves?” Malik is remembering that a UN annual situation report on Somalia, published the previous year, claimed that there were twelve countries involved in the Somali conflict—Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iran, Libya, Egypt, Kenya, Iraq, China, Italy, the United States, France, and Britain.

“That’s right.”

Outside, pedestrians are crossing the busy street in no hurry at all, as if daring the drivers to run them over. Some of them stop in the center, as though saying, “Hit me. See if I care.” Malik observes that already more women are walking around unveiled than when the Courts ran the city.

Qasiir says, “Please tell me where we’re going.”

“Maybe we’ll visit BigBeard’s shop,” Malik says.

“What’s the purpose of our visit?”

“Must there be a purpose?” Malik says.

“In an ideal world, we do things for a reason.”

Malik says, “Well, then, I can pretend to be looking for an iPod or, better still, we can say we are there to price a BlackBerry. We can say anything that will allow us to take a good look at him, unobserved.”

Qasiir doesn’t seem convinced it is a good idea. But he doesn’t say anything.

“Are you opposed to us paying him a visit?”

Qasiir brakes for a pedestrian walking backward, but still the pedestrian collides with his front bumper. The pedestrian, unhurt, signals his apology and backs away into oncoming traffic. There is a ruckus, with drivers stopping all of a sudden, and one of the cars smashes into the one ahead of it. Instantly, crowds gather on either side of the street. Then a man breaks away and Malik observes the surfeit of interest in the eyes of many in the crowd. It is as if everyone is watching and waiting for the opportune moment to go for broke. In his travels, Malik has known of mobs on a Nairobi main street beating a man nearly to death as he was running after a minibus, mistaking him for a thief. A man nearby, just then realizing that he had been dispossessed of his wallet, shouted, “Thief running, catch the thief.” Another man echoed the phrase—“Thief running”—and then another and another joined the chorus. Before the runner had reached his bus, a fourth tripped him. Turning into a mob, the bystanders fell on the man, raining deadly blows on him. By the time the police arrived, the man had also lost his front teeth to a kick, and his own wallet and documents were gone.

But no such incident occurs just now. The traffic eases and they move on.

Malik says, “Tell me what you really think of my plan.”

“There is no benefit in provoking BigBeard unnecessarily,” Qasiir says. “Grandpa, who knew him all his life, always advised me to give him a wide berth.”

“He ruined my visit on my first day, and I won’t forgive myself if I do not do a little to disrupt the flow of his life and then write about it,” Malik says.

Malik thinks that if civil wars are an affront to common sense and Qasiir has known nothing but the affrontery resulting from civil wars,
then he may not understand why it matters to see BigBeard a day after the Courts have been ousted. No need to reiterate that in the old dispensation, when the Courts were in charge, BigBeard doubled as a customs officer in addition to running a computer shop. He is Malik’s idea of a corrupt Courts bureaucrat, although it occurs to him that, along with those determined to profit themselves, there must also have been a core of well-meaning, hardworking, honest individuals.

“I hope we find him at the shop,” Malik says.

Qasiir says, “I hope we don’t.”

“You think talking to him may put us in danger?”

“Not immediately,” Qasiir says.

“But it might put us in danger eventually?”

“It might,” Qasiir says.

Still, Qasiir’s warning doesn’t deter Malik. Maybe he is making up for missing out on interviewing TheSheikh when he had the chance to do so. Once upon a time, he did what he pleased. How he loved the lure of danger when he was younger, when he had no wife and no child. “We’ve become a father,” he said when his child was born, a smile adorning his lips. In a way, he thinks, war correspondents have no business being family people, since that will deter them from pursuing their vocation without worry or fear. Isn’t that what journalists do when they cover wars—endanger their lives? Malik recalls an Austrian poet and editor who described the breed as “heroes of obtrusiveness.” Is there anywhere on earth where the intrusive, inquisitive, danger-courting journalist is as conspicuous as he is in Somalia? Yes, we’ve become a father.

“We’ll just have to be careful with BigBeard. That’s all,” Qasiir says, and he reverses into a parking spot that has fallen vacant.

It takes them longer than necessary to walk to the computer shop, in part because Qasiir drags it out, clearly opposed to the idea of the encounter. He doesn’t have daring in the marrow of his bones. But neither is he bold enough to challenge Malik outright, reminding himself of his responsibility to Grandpa, who is still warm in his grave and would be upset if Qasiir upset Malik. He remembers, too, that Dajaal was fond of the militaristic motto “Orders from high up are orders from high up, and they must be obeyed.” He stays in close contact with Malik, who is reflecting that life here is built on quicksand. Alive one minute, dead the next, and buried in the blink of an eye, no postmortem, not even an entry in a ledger.